Yeh, it’s really what I call “lottery-syndrome”.
People (who don’t know basic statistics) get sucked in by the dream of getting more than they give. Their number will get picked and they’ll win a million for $5.
On that tax thing, everybody’s instinct is to avoid paying at all cost, then try every way they can to get “free” money back from the gov’t. They forget that gov’t can’t pay more than comes in, plus gov’t needs operating costs, so they basically have to keep themselves paupers in order to qualify to get more than they give.
Little do they realize that they could get some dopey job where they can loaf and wind up with more at the end of the day. Doing away with all gov’t handouts simply cracks the whip and forces those types to begrudgingly get jobs.
I heard a hilarious moment one time when a woman was reading a newspaper story about this “poor woman” on gov’t assistance, who was moaning that she was so desperate she might have to “go get that office job”, and she didn’t want to have to be away from her kids.
All these programs can end immediately and things will roll along fine, as the prospect of lower government spending would mean a real long-term prospect of lower tax burdens on all citizens and all businesses, which would be only stimulus that will actually work.
Well...unless it borrows or prints more, which of course devalues all of the money supply.